Nonchalance of the Past
by Infidel Pumpkin
Summary: A game of hide and seek is held in one Aries Imperial Palace. Pre-series one-shot, with pure sibling fluffiness at an extreme. Read and Review, perhaps?


Wheehee, another one-shot. I'll have a solid multi-chapter fanfic up eventually, don't fret. This one-shot is a completely random, fluffy, pre-series pile of English literature that I've had for a while now. This is total fluff. No relevance to the original storyline at all, unfortunately (or fortunately, depends on one's mood).

Again, this is Pre-series. Which means I actually don't really have to put a warning in here! Yay!

Oh, and since Nunnally and Lelouch are little kids and probably do not speak Japanese as a fluent second language as of yet, I've written Nunnally as calling her brother 'Brother', rather than 'Onii-sama', as she does in the show. I'm assuming that in Britannia, they speak English.

Song: 'Theme for the Cute One' by _Hirano Yoshihisa_

* * *

_Nonchalance of the Past_

Naked feet pounded against the marble flooring of the Imperial Palace in rapid succession. A multitude of people behind the path of young Lelouch vi Britannia watched his small sprinting figure in surprise and perhaps confusion. A few of the Palace's servants smiled and waved him off, sometimes cheering him on. Leaving them a small smile or wave, he continued on.

Rounding a corner, a servant carrying a large glass vase nearly dropped the intricate pot on the speeding Lelouch as he arrived from nowhere by their feet. He yelled a quick "Sorry!" before dashing through the grand doors to the dining hall. The servant let out a sigh of relief before continuing her duties.

Lelouch panted as he skidded left and right through the palace, trying his hardest to get as far away as possible. An evil smirk managed to snake its way into his expression as he made a quick turn for the kitchen. He effortlessly dodged the moving feet of the cooks preparing the coming dinner, escaping out the kitchen's back door faster than one of the cooks could exclaim, "Was that Master Lelouch?"

Escaping outside, the prince made his way through the gardens adorning the palace grounds, making sure not to step upon unsuspecting fragile flowers. Finally, he came upon the perfect location- the gardening shed. Lelouch leapt inside the shed, closed the door behind him, and, with the little light filtering from under the doors, felt his way toward the large pile of hay saved for the horses kept in the field next to this one. When he finally reached a satisfying spot, he threw himself within the hay and awaited his sister's calls.

* * *

"…Eighteen, nineteen, twenty! Ready or not, here I come!" Nunnally yelled at the top of her lungs before dashing from the main staircase through the hallways. Because Nunnally could only count to twenty, Lelouch told her to count to twenty three times, therefore giving him one minute to jump into his destination. He had calculated with accuracy, and had managed to reach the shed just in time for Nunnally to begin searching.

Nunnally wandered through the hallways in a hurried state, asking every servant nearby if they had seen her brother go in any particular place. When all but one path was left for her to take, Nunnally sprinted down it, looking down into every vase and every crevice in the palace's walls, including the vase that had nearly cost her brother his life earlier.

Asking servants and other people in the palace was allowed, of course- finding one person in a palace full of people was not an easy task without help. So Nunnally followed the trail of confused people Lelouch had left, hoping to get to her brother before the set time limit of a half hour had ended.

The little princess barged into the kitchen, asking all who could hear if they had seen her brother. One friendly cook pointed to the door discreetly, and Nunnally nodded her thanks before rushing through the door. Now bounding across the royal grounds, Nunnally began to get extremely tired. Not only had her brother found another expert hiding place, but he had also taken the longest path he could accumulate in order to confuse her; but Nunnally vi Britannia would not be beaten in a game of hide and seek. It was the one game she could beat her brother in, as he was not very athletic and he could almost never find her in time.

Nunnally was at least grateful that her brother had given her ample time to locate him after finding such an invisible hiding place. She wandered around the grounds, hoping for some clue. Rounding another hill, she spotted the shed. As she made her way toward the potential hiding place, she heard a succession of sneezes come from inside the doors that seemed to lead to her older brother. _'There!' _her tired mind exclaimed, and just in time, too, as the half hour time limit was quickly reaching its end. The young princess scampered toward the shed and threw the doors open.

"Brother, I found you!" She yelled triumphantly between tired pants, but all that responded was a long string of coughs followed by a few sneezes, and a whimper of discomfort. "Brother?" Nunnally asked the darkness, head tilted to the side with worry etched into her face.

"Nunnally… You found me-" Lelouch cut his words short as he coughed again, and stumbled from the hay into Nunnally's field of vision. Nunnally's eyes grew wide.

"Brother, what were you doing?! You know you're allergic to that stuff..!" Nunnally leapt to her brother as he fell forward slightly, and she could feel his weight leaning into her shoulder. The princess let him down onto the ground gently. "I'll go get someone nearby, wait for me Brother." Nunnally said with fear in her tone, and Lelouch groaned in protest, but he respectfully listened to his sister and rested his head on the shed's wall.

The distressed princess bolted out the door for the closest entrance into the palace. She started to pant after moments of running due to the fatigue tracking down her brother had caused. The nervous expression she had on attracted the servants' attentions immediately. "Please help him! Brother is—" A multitude of attendants rushed toward Nunnally rapidly.

"Lady Nunnally? Where's Master Lelouch?" A servant that Lelouch had always particularly liked asked the her as she wiped the princess' tears from her cheeks. Nunnally's eyes widened and she pointed out the door.

"Brother got sick! He went in the shed to hide and got all sick because I wanted to play hide and seek with him!" Nunnally's small desperate voice was heard throughout the horde of servants working around her, and Lelouch's favorite maid's face fell into concern. As Nunnally cried before her, the woman brought herself to her feet and took the princess's hand.

"Can you take me to him, Lady Nunnally?" She asked in a calm tone, and Nunnally nodded before running towards the shed. The maid walked quickly behind her, keeping at a similar pace while looking ahead at where Lady Nunnally was directing her. When she saw the shed before her, the servant picked up the pace and passed Nunnally to her brother's hiding place where he had so patiently waited for her return.

The maid pulled open the doors, and Nunnally yelled a "Brother!" before finally making it to the entrance. She gasped from the discomfort of continuous running before opening her eyes and looking down at her brother.

His breathing was shallow and wheezing, and he looked up at his little sister and the servant with eyes that looked puffy, as if he'd been crying all day. "Nunnall—" He stopped himself with a coughing fit before the maid knelt down to the prince and cupped his face in her hands.

"Master Lelouch?" She asked, and when she received no answer, the housekeeper scooped the ill prince into her arms and rushed back to the palace, Nunnally following behind with one hand gripping the hem of her skirt.

* * *

"Brother?" Nunnally's quiet eager voice echoed into her brother's bedroom through the small she opened from the door.

"Nunnally?" She heard her brother answer, and she lightened up a bit as she pushed the door open wide enough for her to slip in, and closed it behind her.

"Brother," Nunnally repeated, "are you feeling better now?" She asked with a bit of worry behind her tone. She walked slowly to her brother's bedside before crawling next to him.

"Yes, I'm okay now, Nunnally." He responded with a slight smile playing with his face, but it quickly disappeared into a deep frown when his sister began to cry. "Nunnally?" He asked, now the sibling with concern for the other.

"Brother, you only played with me because I wanted you to spend time with me, and it made you sick! It's my fault for making you play with me, I should have let you read a book or something, I—" She stopped her sentence and grabbed Lelouch in a powerful hug, tears flowing freely down her face. The prince was surprised at first with his sister's reaction, and returned the hug gently, holding her head on his shoulder. This allowed the princess to proceed with shaky sniffling and whimpering into his shoulder.

"Shhh, Nunnally," Lelouch attempted to calm the princess down, "It wasn't your fault at all." He smirked half-heartedly. "Your brother is just an idiot, that's all." He got her laughing for a moment, which slowed down her hysterical fit.

She looked up at him with somber eyes. "Are you sure you're okay?" she asked between sniffing and coughing.

"Of course I am," Lelouch insisted, and pushed his sister down into the middle of his large bed. "You shouldn't worry about me, Nunnally, your big brother can take care of himself."

"But, Brother, y—" Lelouch cut her off by tickling her stomach lightly, and she giggled the high pitched silly laugh that always made him smile. "Brother, stop!" She said between gasps for air, and he let go at her request. This, however, was a bad move.

The next moment, Nunnally pounced on her older brother, asking for revenge by tickling him dangerously fast on the stomach. Lelouch had always flailed about a lot whenever he was tickled, but Nunnally had mastered the art of dodging feet and hands while continuously targeting her brother's belly. He laughed until his and Nunnally's eyes began to water from the powerful cackles escaping their lungs.

Suddenly, Lelouch gasped, and he went toppling onto the ground in a tangle of bed sheets and awkwardly positioned limbs. "Brother!" Nunnally cried, and ran around the bed to his aid. "Are you hurt?" She asked with serious eyes.

Lelouch proceeded to throw back his head in unbound laughter. Nunnally followed suit, the two of them unfortunately appearing mentally unstable to the maid who had happened to walk in on their feverish tickling match.

When the maid had checked back on them later into the night, she found the young princess' head resting on Lelouch's chest, rising and falling with his deep, slow breaths. She merely gave them a thin blanket before wishing the two heirs sweet dreams, closing the door lightly behind her.

Lelouch awakened from the maid's quiet footsteps, his eyes groggy with sleepiness weighing his eyelids down. He gently pulled Nunnally's resting body up next to his own, placing her head on the pillow delicately as to not wake his sister up. He pulled the covers up to his shoulders, making sure to cover Nunnally as well, and was soon as departed to the world as he had been moments before.

* * *

_Nunnally, Lelouch, and most other concepts (c) Sunrise/CLAMP/Everyone Else. The maids and cooks and the other random nameless folk are mine though (lucky me)._


End file.
